From General Hospital to the Hospital of Souls: Interview with Jonathan Jackson

This morning, after Matins, I high-tailed it across New Jersey over to Newark Liberty International Airport, pulled up to the Departures area at Terminal A, and picked up a man holding a tray of coffee. We drove to the airport parking, picked a spot, and proceeded to chat for about ninety minutes, about sixty of which I caught on tape. The man was (asā€¦

Evangelical Lent Redux

In my previous post, a comment from a Protestant challenged me to argue for Lent purely from Scripture, also saying that his own experience of Lent, like Mark Galli’s, was pretty miserable. That led me to consider that I actually had left several important things out in the previous post, most especially touching upon the question of the dualism of Evangelicals and what thatā€¦

“Giving Up Something” for Lent

Update: This post is now available as an audio recording at Ancient Faith Radio. Mark Galli recently posted an article entitled Giving Up Self-Discipline for Lent which is actually a fairly fascinating look into what Lenten ascetical effort looks like from within a Pietist tradition. Pietism is, in brief, the belief that the private relationship with God is paramount and that doctrine and sharedā€¦

The Transfiguration of Place: An Orthodox Christian Vision of Localism

Both parts of my talk, The Transfiguration of Place: An Orthodox Christian Vision of Localism, are now available via Ancient Faith Radio. Get them here: Part 1, Part 2 I have to say that this is one of my favorites among the things I’ve written. A number of folks have actually asked me to expand this into a book, but I don’t think Iā€¦

Interview with Theron Mathis on “Sword in the Fire”

Theron Mathis, author of The Rest of the Bible: A Guide to the Old Testament of the Early Church, has graciously conducted a brief interview with me regarding Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy and other matters on his weblog Sword in the Fire. Excerpt from the introduction: Fr. Andrew does the seemingly impossible in a mere 224 pages. He gives a broad scope of Orthodox belief,ā€¦

The Eminem Ethic

I spotted this image on Facebook today, and it puts forth a commonly accepted ethic, which I’ve dubbed here the Eminem Ethic. Essentially, various categories of race, sexual desire, physical appearance, and economic status don’t matter when it comes to winning his kindness. What matters is that “you’re nice to me.” This sounds pretty good. This is a morality bandwagon that probably most folksā€¦

The Return to God

Sunday of the Prodigal Son, 2012 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. One of the principal themes that we meditate upon during these weeks that precede Great Lent and during the Fast itself is forgiveness. And itā€™s no wonder, because the Christian Church is really the only place in which forgiveness makesā€¦

The Wise Men of Silesia

Throughout much of January and often into February, I spend close to 20-30 hours every week visiting the homes of parishioners and blessing them as part of the annual Theophany celebrations. I put several hundred miles on my car’s odometer during this time. Aside from the extra workload and of course the joy of visiting parishioners in their homes, I also particularly enjoy drivingā€¦